


A Heaven of Hell

by adonais



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: sshg_exchange, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 08:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20337031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adonais/pseuds/adonais
Summary: Hermione finds Severus in a hidden garden and, together, they unearth the secrets of healing.





	A Heaven of Hell

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first SSHG fic I wrote, all the way back in 2011. It was for the SSGH Exchange, and my recipient was the LJ user 'lemonade8'.
> 
> See the original prompts at the end.

_The mind is its own place, and in itself_  
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.  


— John Milton, _Paradise Lost_ (1:254-255)

  
They were in the last chilly days of winter, but spring was not far behind. The snow that had gathered on the tree branches and flower beds was beginning to melt, leaving only damp patches in the soil as its legacy. In a few weeks there would be greens aplenty, a sea of plants struggling to break free of their loamy entrapment to finally greet the sun after months of depravity. Perhaps they would be so thirsty for renewed life that need would turn into greed, and the enclosed space would once again become the tangled mess Hermione had first known. And perhaps he, too, would revert to the half-delirious beast she had not recognised at first.

Looking at him now, it was hard to believe he was anything but the composed and saturnine man he had always been. He who was Professor Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts, with a stern mouth and impenetrable gaze, was crouched in front of a small sprig that had found its way from under the ground. He extended a finger to touch the plant delicately, and if anyone was foolish enough to assume his actions were borne of gentleness, the hard lines between his brows would quickly dismiss that notion. He took his time, observing the thin sprout this way and that, pouring his attention to the minute thing whose life could be snuffed out in less than a breath.

She took her time, watching him take his time.

He knew she was there; of that, Hermione had no doubt. She often wondered whether he was testing her patience, whether his silent challenges were preludes to a battle of wills. But when he broke their impasse after an indefinite amount of time, the lengths of which were known only to him, Hermione would be struck by the sharp look in his eyes. Somehow, she would always feel like she had lost their game, but gained something else in return.

So she waited, her hands growing cold despite her thick woollen gloves. The sight before her gave an impression of peace she was loathe to disturb, and instead of crossing the patches of snow-covered ground to reach the smooth log that had become a makeshift bench, Hermione cast a wordless cushioning spell and settled against the stone wall behind her. He would acknowledge her eventually, in his own time; he always acknowledged her, if not with words.

She saw it first in his shoulders, the way they tensed against a spasm of pain she could never truly understand. Snape had been an excellent spy, and even now, in this brave new world after the war, he was still exceptional. But his cover would be easily blown, if one knew where to look; his reflexes, no matter how tightly honed, would never suppress the shudder that started from the twisted flesh that was the Dark Lord’s parting gift to his most trusted – and most untrustworthy – servant. He would never again appear impervious to his surroundings, not when his twitching neck betrayed his secrets.

His eyes, when he finally looked at her, were unreadable. Hermione hoisted herself away from the wall and walked towards him, knowing she would take most of the steps and he, only a few. Not once had they ever met halfway.

Snape rose slowly, laboriously, until he reached his full height and towered over her. She held still as his feet made the calculated movements that brought him closer, his boots firm against the ground, as if every step was a deliberate decision that took all his strength to make. As he adjusted his sleeves, Hermione caught sight of the jagged line that ran diagonally along his wrist. The small clouds of warm air that left her mouth in a steady pulse faltered, and the half-beat before his final step told her Snape had noticed the change. The guilt rushed up to meet her, and along with it, the incessant voice from the past few weeks, asking if she was doing the right thing, if there was perhaps another way.

Hermione stubbornly pushed them aside – both her uneasiness and unanswered questions. She was not here to indulge her thoughts, or to find a few hours of solitude in their forsaken paradise. Today, she was here to say goodbye.

* * *

His body was home to a countless litany of scars, but the one on his wrist, perhaps the tiniest silver line that marred his skin, was the only one that burned in Hermione’s conscience. It happened barely a fortnight after she had known of his existence – though, it would be more correct to think of it as his most recent existence of many. The sun had been harsher back then, more unforgiving, glinting high in the spring afternoon, almost blinding her with its brightness. Hermione wasn’t used to this kind of sun, the bold incarnation that flew through cloudless skies and reflected off glossy leaves and untarnished blossoms; but then, she had thought, neither was he. And yet, she had thought him foolish and proud, and the traces of uncertainty dissipated when she saw his haggard state.

‘Professor,’ she had said, rushing to join him on the ground, ‘please, let me help with that.’

He gave her a scathing look that cut – but still, his knife could not.

‘Please,’ she repeated, kneeling before the newly-bloomed dittany. She was close enough to feel the heat from his body. ‘I can help you, and I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Please, don’t do this to yourself. It’s...it’s not your fault you’re here.’

That was the wrong thing to say. Snape’s jaw tensed, and he drew both his knife and his body away from her. Hermione blanched, remembering the few memories Harry had decided to share with her to alleviate his own guilt: memories of the snivelling man and lost redemption and broken words, swirling in the silver pools of regrets and self-loathing. Snape _did_ consider this his fault, this inability to perform a task so simple he could teach it in his sleep; this, and the Potters’ deaths, and the inexplicable weaving of fate that had saved him from his own, predetermined end.

Hesitation crept back, accompanied by the slightest twinge of fear. But she was not the same girl from ages past, and the only thing that remained unchanged was her tenacity.

‘I can help you, I can... I can help you.’ Her words gathered its own rhythm, slipping into the time-old pattern of the rising and falling that gave breath to human speech. Words from another place came to her, and she let them spill, unchecked. ‘Essence of Dittany is a rare restorative that is as precarious as it is powerful. You must use the utmost care when harvesting it, else the brown liquid will lose both its colour and efficacy.’

His only response was to rise to his feet and turn his back to her. Her own anger rose in kind.

‘I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. You’re obviously in pain, and your grip isn’t strong or steady enough to—’

She grunted in surprise when Snape spun around and shoved her, sending her sprawling to the ground. The resulting ache in her limbs settled like a quiet blanket, and with it, she felt the shifting realisation of her mistakes: the second, for forgetting he was a dangerous man; and the first, for remembering – verbatim – words Snape himself had given to her in a dungeon room from a lost season of schooling.

But the two facts still did not align with the image before her, of Snape kneeling in front of the plant once more, both hands trembling as he wielded knife and wand to extract the essence that would give him life. How could this be? How could such a man fall to such depths? Oh, she knew greatness only whispered false promises of permanence, and she certainly had enough examples to go by; but this was no Dumbledore, this was no Dark Lord, this was _Snape_, a man whose perpetual mask betrayed nothing of the breadth and depth of his talents, a man who had served two masters but was only chained by his own allegiance, a man whose silence was thunderous, deadly.

Only now, he was truly pathetic, more animal than man. Sweat trickled down his face, onto his wounds and into his dirty shirt. If it weren’t for the buttons that recalled his austere robes, she would have questioned what she saw. But the thick black material was his, torn and caked with mud, swallowing the man within.

This time, Hermione’s fury was tinged with fear, and she rose, not bothering to brush off the dirt from her own robes. She knew she was unwelcome, but Hermione also knew she could not stand to watch him struggle for a moment longer, not when scars told the stories of his past brilliance, not when she could now do what he could not.

‘Stop being so childish, and just let me help,’ she said, and she made for the knife. Out of his own surprise or weakness, Snape let it drop. Her reflexes surpassed his, and Hermione snatched it with one hand and used the other to twist her wand with the necessary incantations. 

Her triumph was short-lived. She found his own wand under her chin, and it pressed into the soft skin, eliciting a gasp – of what, she did not know. But even worse than her vulnerability was the tip that shook uncontrollably, and the pressure that was not hard enough. His eyes were black with madness and an undeniable flicker of helplessness. In that moment, she hated him more than ever, more than his favouritism and sneers and the act that made him Headmaster; she hated him for breaking the final illusion, that after the last chapter of their story, all would be well.

And in her hatred, she flung the knife back at him, indifferent now to his plight. Her relief when he withdrew his wand was only physical and superficial, and when she saw the rivulet of blood that trickled down the wrist she had inadvertently cut, Hermione felt absolutely nothing at all.

* * *

She had a twin scar, one that started on her neck and dipped past her collarbone. The scars matched not because of their shape or position, but because their creators were paired and their instrument the same.

In the year after Voldemort’s defeat, Hermione stayed away from Hogwarts, the place that cemented her childhood and marked her as a survivor of war. She took her NEWTs in a private, supervised room at the Ministry, and within the week, she donned a different set of robes for her new job in the same underground building. All the various invitations to return to the school, from friends and teachers alike, were met with her polite refusal. Hermione had put up a brave front for so long; surely, no one had a right to question the one decision she could now make of her own will, and which wouldn’t affect the wizarding world at large. She saw the castle and the grounds enough in her dreams, darkened by ash and blood and muffled screams.

It was during one of those nights, when the casualties of the final battle merged into one, twisted being and flung curses at her retreating back, that she Disillusioned herself and Apparated to Hogwarts, like a tamed eagle instinctively returning to its cage. Her heart pounding and her mind clouded from the last visages of her nightmare, Hermione hit the ground with a thud, digging her fingers into dirt as she struggled to regain her footing and run from her invisible friends-turned-enemies. She was almost at the castle when the hooting owls and gentle crickets told her that she was alone. By then, her thin nightshirt was soaked through, and the fear was throbbing so strongly that she had no room for feeling foolish. Frantically, Hermione clung to the castle wall with a firm need to seek refuge from her own thoughts.

She gave a startled cry when the stones gave, and she fell through the wall as if it never existed. Her stomach twisted as she thought of the punishment she would inevitably receive for breaching the castle’s defences.

It took her a moment to realise she wasn’t in the Hogwarts courtyard as expected, but a small, enclosed area she’d never seen before. The sudden tumble disoriented her, and she willed herself to calm as she took stock of her surroundings.

Then, she came to a second, more dangerous realisation: there was a knife at her throat, its sharp blade beginning to sting.

She gripped her wand and the words for the Stunning spell had almost left her when a hand clutched at her throat, cutting off her words and her breath. Her own hands flew to her neck, fingers trying to pry off the death grip, and her mind scrambled for the names of Death Eaters still on the loose. The body behind her trembled, and Hermione’s own legs were shaking, though she did not know if it was from fear or the cold soil under her bare feet. Then, as her skin gave away and the sudden pain on her neck spurred her back to her senses, she touched her wand against the offending hand, channelling the thought, _Stupefy_. Her attacker fell to the floor, and Hermione gasped the night air as she brusquely sealed the cut on her neck. The knife that was stained with her blood glinted at her from where it lay in the dirt.

At first, she did not recognise the shape lying on the ground, the dark eyes frozen with the unmistakable glaze of fear. His black hair was a mess that covered half his face and fell well past his shoulders, and his shirt, though once of a fine quality, was torn and crusted with blood and pus and sap. He was so pale he shone under the moonlight like a fallen angel, and the two puncture wounds on his own neck were a pair of red eyes staring at her from beyond the grave.

‘Professor Snape!’ she choked out, and she released him from the spell. Hermione saw the fear in his eyes melt into comprehension, and then slip back into madness. He grabbed his knife and scrambled to his knees, pointing it at her.

‘Professor Snape,’ Hermione repeated, this time more softly, and he tensed with anger. To her surprise, he drew back and wiped the blade with the bottom of his shirt until the knife was clean and the cotton stained with another layer of blood. Then he crawled to a patch of small, bell-shaped flowers that covered a corner of the enclosure, picked up the black wand on the ground, and sliced through the plants while he feebly cast a spell. 

Hermione watched in silence, knowing better than to interrupt the extraction of the essence from dittany; but even in the dim light, she could see that the resulting liquid was pale, ineffective. Perhaps that’s why his wounds still looked fresh, even a year after she saw him bleeding in the Shrieking Shack and returned to find him gone; perhaps that’s why his usually precise movements were wild and driven by pain.

Her mind was buzzing with questions, of how he remained alive, alone, and here; of how this place came to be. But Hermione was numbed by the image before her, so incongruent with the authority figure she had known that she felt tears trickling down her face. Then, the instinct for self-preservation kicked in, and her voice whispered to her: _You are lucky to escape with only a scratch, you are lucky, because you wouldn’t still be here if Severus Snape wanted you gone._ Certain now she was neither wanted nor needed, Hermione touched the wall from where she fell and thought fiercely of home, of her bed, of her scattered life in the outside world. She would leave him here; she would never come back.

Her tiny flat was stifling and stale after her impromptu flight through the night. Hermione tended to her cut with an efficiency that was almost careless, but she did not have the proper potions to prevent scarring, and the only person who could brew a perfect batch was wilting away in an unknown place.

Her neck was bruised for days afterwards, her skin tingling from the fading ghost of his cold fingertips.

* * *

That was the only time he touched her, but her turn came much later, when the leaves had fallen and before the snow had started. Hermione was sprawled on a grassy patch, the scent and texture and shade exactly as she liked it, enjoying the wind that played with the trees and teased its way into her hair.

‘Sometimes, on days like this, I can close my eyes and pretend I’m somebody else.’ Her murmur rang through the garden, and though he heard her, Hermione knew Snape would make no response. ‘A princess, perhaps, with the key to seven kingdoms. Or a baker, with a world of breads and pastries at her fingertips.’

She glanced at where he lay, a few feet away, hands beneath his head with his clean and mended shirt buttoned to the top. His hair was still long but no longer untidy, and his cheeks had been kissed by sunlight and fresh air.

‘You know, I used to pretend I was a witch,’ she continued, this time more softly. ‘I guess some part of me always knew. But that was before I realised being a witch didn’t mean you could just wave your wand and cast spells whenever you wanted; there were rules, and responsibilities.’

His chest rose with a quick huff, and the faint breeze carried the imagined sound of his laughter. She turned her head, just so, and studied the sleek shape of his body, the slim frame with the wiry muscles that had been lost and regained in the past few months. The beginnings of the scar at his neck peeked out from under the collar, and Hermione was ceased by a strange desire to run a finger along the damaged skin and watch the way his eyes would darken, those deep, black eyes that looked into her mind and soul and unearthed the quivering longings of her heart; eyes that bore into hers now, seeing, perhaps not for the first time, images of their twisted limbs and broken skin and arching necks with their respective scars; eyes that held her with a silent challenge, an unspoken command.

Hermione returned his gaze, uncaring that he was violating her with Legilimency; she wanted to be violated, she wanted to be claimed by this man who had nothing else. She inched towards him, her voice dropping, her hand hovering mid-air.

‘What about you? Have you ever wanted to be somebody else?’

For a moment, she saw him in Dumbledore’s office, his lips softening and forming the word, _Always_, and the silver doe burst and bounded and soared, and filled Hermione’s heart with that which it should banish. But the image was from far away, and Snape – her Snape, the one who was a stranger, whom she somehow _knew_ intrinsically – was here, and so close.

_I am what I am,_ his eyes seemed to say as he peeled back her layers and penetrated her final defence, _and I know who you are, too._

Her finger settled on his skin, and Snape’s eyes fluttered shut, his mouth half-open, like a man on trial who finally heard his verdict. But then, his hands steeled around her wrist, and Hermione let him take her mouth and her willing body, and show her what it was like to truly know him, to truly be inside somebody else, in a tangle of limbs and tongues and sweat.

The only thing missing was his voice; but that, too, she heard, in the rustling leaves, in the slap of their bodies, in the brush of his mind against hers.

* * *

She never asked why he made no sound, and Snape never provided an explanation. At first, Hermione thought his fury towards her intrusion simply ran beyond words. Then, after she stepped past the walls and tried to banish the sight of his blood that marked her second visit, one driven by morbid curiosity, it occurred to her that breathing itself was agony.

When she returned to his sanctuary three days later and found him shivering and curled beside the plants that drooped towards him, almost mockingly, Hermione took out the clean blade, untarnished with magic, which she had brought. They exchanged no words as she made quick work with knife and wand, and when she applied the fresh and potent elixir to his neck, Snape was so delirious that his resistance only served to expose himself more.

Seizing the opportunity, Hermione poured the dittany liberally down his neck and onto his chest, not flinching once as Snape convulsed at the contact, his lids and mouth snapping open, revealing bloodshot eyes and yellow, crooked teeth. His breath stank of venom and agony and death.

But still, the only sounds he made came from the twitching of arms and legs and finally, a long, deep exhalation as the worst of his initial pain passed. And hours later, after Hermione discovered the alcove and Transfigured the half-rags, half-leaves into a mattress and blankets, she expected some sort of reaction when she settled him into the makeshift sickbed. But Snape only closed his eyes in something akin to defeat, neither words of apology nor gratitude nor scathing condemnation leaving his lips.

He was by the patch of dittany again the next day, fumbling with his spells. His work was clumsy, but the veneer of control paid tribute to Hermione’s success from the previous night, and he managed to extract a stream of thin, pale liquid. Hermione sat down beside him and chose a small patch of the volatile plants, filling her vial with the golden-brown drops of life. When Snape ignored her offering, Hermione left the bottle on the ground, rose with strained dignity, brushed off her robes, and went to inspect the vines draped across the other end of the garden. She never heard a sound from him, not the hissing that should have come from the burning touch of the dittany, nor the footsteps that must have accompanied his laboured amble. But when she finished her stroll, the vial was in the same place as she had left it – only empty.

Hermione remembered the alcove she had found and transformed, but there were no sounds from there either to tell her Snape was displeased with her intrusion. The silence was somewhat disconcerting. Hermione found the fallen log of a long-dead tree, hidden under decades of unwanted and unweeded growth, and calmed herself by stroking the rough bark for several hours.

Eventually, after his Essence of Dittany turned the same brilliant brown to match hers, and then after the vials were no longer needed, Snape joined her, taking the left side of the long log. They slipped into summer, and the pocket of air between them grew warmer. She began to talk of the world beyond their walls, tales of politics and posthumous medals and official ceremonies that were inconsequential, but nevertheless entertaining. He took in all her words and never gave anything back, save for his unwavering attention.

Hermione couldn’t remember when her small talk – now grown as comfortable as their mutual silence – turned to concerns closer to her heart. As they watered the plants and weeded the garden, she spoke of her ministry job, her dissatisfaction, her constant uneasiness which she had always attributed to survivor’s guilt. Her reluctance before mentioning Harry for the first time was short-lived, and by the time she moved from mourning her lost parents to dissect her failed relationship with Ron, she carried on as if in the safety of her own home. By then, she was far too content with Snape’s companionship to risk asking why he remained mute, lest he take away her last vestige of comfort and replace it with loathing remarks in his usually biting tone. But when she began to cry, she realised there was little joy in just hearing the sound of her own voice.

‘I feel so alone,’ she managed through tears, as the sun finished the last of its daily journey. ‘I barely know my two best friends anymore. Everyone has moved on, but I’m still here, still trapped. What’s the point of saving the world if you end up losing everything that matters?’

Then she remembered to whom she was speaking, the elusive fragments of a man who had spent his entire lifetime breaking what little he had into smaller pieces, and her bright eyes turned to shame as she glanced up at him. Twilight infused the air with secrets and mystery, but in the semi-darkness, Hermione found the answer to a question she had never thought of asking.

_We’re both alone,_ he seemed to say with the lines on his face and scars down his neck. _But there are worse things than loneliness._

After the final battle, Hermione had cried herself to sleep every night. That evening, she lay in bed and touched herself, and only cried out his name.

* * *

But she was not here to cry, or reminisce. Today, she was here to say goodbye.

He studied her, in this forsaken paradise they shared, and Hermione remained impassive, opening herself up for his inspection. She knew she had changed – for the better, she hoped – and Hermione wondered what he saw now, in her determined jaw and the bite of her lips and the frizzy hair that would never be anything but.

In turn, the shifting shroud before her became crystal clear. He was broken beyond repair: the man before her could never again be Professor Snape, who could never again be the ambitious Death Eater just out of school, who could never again be the bright-eyed Severus listening to his mother’s tales of magic on rare evenings when the drinks were dry. But the pieces that remained – the thousands of pieces, some sharp enough to draw blood, others soft and smooth and gentle – could shape a new life, a different life.

They stood, facing each other in the garden while the birds sang and the cool breeze whistled a long-forgotten tune.

Snape looked away first, his gaze drawn back to the patch of fertile soil that had shifted over the months. The dittany was nowhere to be seen; instead, the garden had housed other flowers and plants, none of them medicinal. There were the beds of roses, their colours emerging from thorny stalks at the cusp of autumn; the irises, which were of the deepest purple and reminded Hermione of a distant Prince; the frangipanis, those sweet-smelling petals that infused the air with desire in the long summer afternoons; and the lilies, always the lilies, the most transient, the most treasured. Hermione had often wondered from where the seedlings for the flowers had come, and indeed, from where the entire garden had come. Perhaps it was the castle responding to the deepest needs of two desperate souls; perhaps he, or she, or both, had somehow conjured it into existence with the force of their will.

Of one thing she was certain: for the past almost-year, it had tended to their fancies and nurtured their needs. Inside these walls, they were invisible to the world and invincible from themselves.

But neither of them needed that same sentient care anymore, not from this garden that had been created for them and shaped by them. Snape was healed from his injuries, or as healed as he could be, and Hermione...

Hermione had found what she’d always sought.

‘It’s time to go,’ she said, softly. ‘It’s time to say goodbye.’

His eyes bore into her as she turned and traced her footsteps back to the entrance, the exit, the portal to a faraway place called home. When she reached the solid stone, she touched it gently and felt it give way to its familiar passage. Somehow, Hermione knew that if she left, she would never be able to return. And if he stayed, then he, too, would be lost to her.

She removed the glove from a hand and raised it, arm outstretched, and went through his address in her head. _Professor_, she thought, and the portrait of the imposing instructor dissipated from her mind; _sir_, she thought, and the image of the self-assured double-agent dissolved; ‘Severus,’ she said, and the man before her observed her carefully, his hair messy and clothing heavy with dirt, his mind tossing around the implication of what she said, and all that she had not.

A year ago, she would have tried to persuade him with words, presenting her arguments with the logic she had honed over the years. Now, Hermione understood that silence was a type of magic in itself, sacred as the sea. So she kept her hand steady, an unmoving rock, an unchanging foundation, and waited for Snape to make his decision. The heat she had managed to trap with her woollen gloves started to escape, and she felt the loss as her fingers began to cool.

When Snape finally moved, his hand was as cold as ice, but his eyes were warm, like the first breath of spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompts:  
\- Secret Garden: Hermione finds a secret garden at Hogwarts. Snape can exist physically only in this garden.  
\- Cauldron of the Celts. Hermione discovers an ancient book that describes the potion used in Celtic cauldrons that would revive fallen warriors. They were restored the next day, but were mute. She chooses to bring back Snape. 
> 
> I’ve taken the former and combined it with elements of the latter.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
